Sustainable Samsø

Welcome to Samsø

Last weekend I joined a group of DIS students for the Sustainable Samsø study tour. It involved two days and two nights of biking, hiking and learning about sustainability on the island.


Samsø Island is a small island in Denmark. It used to be an island of purely farmers but in the last decade younger generations had started to leave the island and as the farming industry became more consolidated, these small island farms started to go out of business. There were few employment opportunities for people and the island was left with two options: either it would die out and no longer be inhabited or find a way to maintain jobs on the island and incentives for people to stay. In the late nineties the Danish government issued a proposal: A competition between all of Denmark’s islands to come up with a plan revolving around sustainability. Whichever island had the best plan would be granted a large sum of government money to see the plan through.

Soren Hermansen, a Samsø native, drew up the plan, which ultimately won the government grant. Since then the island has carried out his vision. He brought solar and wind power as well as centralized heating plants to the island, which now produces 10% more clean electricity than it consumes. The island is now an international showcase demonstrating the possibilities of sustainable living. The island is also a very popular summer vacation destination, acting much like Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, with beautiful landscapes and charming sea towns.

The Energy Academy

After an hour and a half long train ride followed by a two-hour ferry ride we made it to the island and walked to our hostel that Friday night. We woke on Saturday to a misty and very foggy morning. We nonetheless hopped on our bikes at 8 AM and were off on our morning tour. We rode our bikes through the winding dirt roads and passed the most adorable houses I have ever seen, stopping occasionally to learn a bit about the places we were passing. Our first main stop was the Energy Academy, where we heard a presentation about the history of the island and how it functions now. We then biked to Brundy-Ballen Straw District Heating Plant, which uses wheat and rye straw from the island. It consumes 1,200 tons of straw each year and has an output of 1.6 MW. 

Lunch in the Brundy-Ballen Straw District Heating Plant

Next we visited our professor’s friend, Jørgen, a local dairy farmer. We got to pet his cows and see all the cute baby ones as well.

Can we get one, Daddy, pretty please?? 

Everyone on the island has at least a small share in the windmills on it and this farmer had his very own. He took us out to the middle of his fields where the windmill was. At this point the weather had improved to a beautiful sunny day. We approached the turbine awed by the enormous size of it and surprised by the noise that it made. We were all very excited to see it, when to our greatest delight the farmer asked us to join him up to the top! We climbed up in groups and got to enjoy the view from the top of the wind turbine – INCREDIBLE!

We biked back to the hostel, all pretty tired, but not tired enough to resist jumping on the huge bouncy trampoline thing the hostel had. Jumping was followed by dinner and a campfire. Instead of roasting marshmallows and S’mores in Denmark, though, they make “snøbrod”. A snøbrod is basically just a baked roll. What you do is take a long stick and wrap uncooked dough around the tip of it. You then bake the roll over the fire (which takes much longer than a marshmallow), and top it off with some ketchup. I have to say, we were all much bigger fans of the traditional American S’more. 

The next morning we were up early and loaded our backpacks onto the bus, which drove us to a woodchip heating plant and solar panel field. We learned how both of these power generators worked and then were back on the bus to get to our hiking destination in the Nordby Hills. The hike was only an hour and was hardly very difficult (I was hoping for something a little more physically demanding), but offered some gorgeous views of the towns and the ocean.

Afterwards we got to experience the largest labyrinth in the world. It was an old abandoned Christmas tree farm and is now a maze covering six hectares of land with 5.5 km of paths. We went off in groups answering the maze’s questions and eventually found our way out after a solid hour. We then drove to the island’s most popular town, walked around and ate lunch at the local brewery, the Samsø Bryghus, where everything is made with only local ingredients from the island. The town was incredibly adorable. It was like Martha’s Vineyard but less industrialized and with thatched roofs.

We then boarded the ferry and said farewell to Samsø Island.